May 2008 Archives

The Naked Science episode on TV right now is discussing "extremophiles" and the possibility that they may live or have lived on Mars. Sometimes I think there is a human equivalent to these microbes.

For those who don't know, extremophiles is a nice logical name for microorganisms that favor difficult environmental conditions - extremes of temperature or radiation, chemical environments that would be toxic to other forms of life, that sort of gig.

Don't you know someone who lives like that in an emotional way?

I do; a friend of mine was just telling me about his regrets at having left a relationship that I'd call doomed. The person he broke up with was married to someone else, lives more than a thousand miles away, and has - shall we say - lots o' baggage, in the forms of multiple dependents and health issues.

I told him it was okay, nay, good, to make an intellect-based decision in a situation like that, but I don't think anything I said penetrated to the decisionmaking center of his brain. Or, as he'd put it, his heart. He's probably still gonna get back into that mess. See? Extremophile.

I have apparently (I hope) grown out of such behavior, though it took me years and years, and it's not like I don't occasionally relapse and be drawn to something that's not so terribly healthy for me.

Though I think that the fact that for the past several years I've been able to eat healthy foods and only healthy foods with no difficulty whatsoever suggests that I probably have that ability in other areas of life.

At the moment, I am feeling very anti-complications, and anti-"settling." Anti-settling for less. Anti-settling down. All that.

I'd rather be airborne, thank you very much, and the concept of being tied to someone else, of having to give a good god-damn what they think of my every little decision and behavior, well let's just say it's an unsavory prospect. Apart from the sex, of course. That sounds appealing.

Welcome to the Botanical Gardens. It's very, very pretty there. Lots of flowers and trees. We wandered, we looked up at the blue-blue sky, we took lots of pictures of ourselves playing in among the flowers, we sniffed a metric ton (each) of various roses (mmmm lemony), and we marveled at the giant pitch-black irises.

We knitted on the train both ways. I worked on my First (hopefully Triumphant) Sock. My traveling companion worked on her First (undoubtedly Triumphant) legwarmers. When I got home, I jumped on my bike and rode to Central Park and got a bunch of plant matter in my eyes and tired myself out on those hills and came home all nicely whooped and sweaty.

The next day I had to work (say it with me, ICK!) but then later I got on my bike again and rode to the bowling alley, stopping first at a little park and watching the sun sink low in the sky with about a million hipsters, all picnicking and smoking and trying to outcool one another with their giant 1970s sunglasses and their short little baggy dresses and their long sideburns and their track bikes with curly bars.

But it was nice. And then I went bowling, and bowled really badly until I realized I needed a heavier ball (either that or the second giant 22-ounce beer kicked in), and then I bowled progressively better, finishing up with a STRIKE in the last frame. Yay, me!

And the kids bowling next to us were all sad when we left because we had been cheering for them, too, and they were gonna miss that, because they were too cool to cheer as wholeheartedly as we do. Plus, we had better tattoos.

MASH. Embalming fluid. Baby's first pedicure. I can't figure it out.

Had one of those days where the stress was like someone set a big bomb ticking in my head, and all I could hear was the tick-tick-tick, barely being able to keep working over that sound. Went out for a walk and got into a mental fight with somebody at my client's office.

The weather was (again) too unsettled and stormy for safe biking (I don't mind riding in rain, but I don't want my boyfriend to rust).

Now I am sitting on the couch knitting my bicycle bag strap pad (say that seven times fast; I dare you) and thinking about the email "conversation" I had with Juno today, about the role of scent in personal identity, or more properly, about perfume as a form of self-expression, like smellable art. I hadn't ever thought of it that way, but I like it. And then I think about the larger ways that we tell tales about ourselves: our clothes, our tattoos, our jobs, our houses, our hair.

I guess I tend to think of the physical containers we occupy as so often getting in the way of being seen for who we are that it seems weird to also have most of our self-expression be centered around outward manifestations of personality. Or rather, to have to drape our expressions of self around the random containers we inhabit. But then, maybe adorning and/or altering our bodies (whether in temporary or permanent ways) is a form of bringing the self to the surface. Even if it doesn't necessarily make the same kind of sense to a viewer as it does to the person doing the expressing.

I mean, it's like art: people get tattooed because the design has some kind of meaning for them, but then everyone who looks at it has to have that meaning explained, anyway.

I am rambling, once again. It's not a fully formed thought, but then, this is a blog, not a novel or a treatise, so who the fuck cares.

Micro, macro, that's how my brain likes to go. I say this because I just looked over at my cat and had some sort of formless thought about her that brought me into the room again. That's pretty much her job, I guess.

Anyway. I am in love with my tall socks lately. Well, love is too strong a word, but you know what I mean. Lots of late suppers and long brunches, bike rides in the park, that sort of thing.

Sigh. Rainy day. No bike ride. Lots of walking around in wet trousers. A blood test. A visit to the physical therapist's office, which is nice and has jazz playing in it but still involves being poked in the most painful spot on my butt.

My mom is getting me a massage for my birthday, and I am not sure whether to look forward to being kneaded into a more relaxed shape, or to fear the pain it may involve.

I am sick at heart lately, I'll admit. Nothing terminal, and nothing really unusual, but it does make me awfully weepy when a fairly good romantic movie comes on TV. And it makes me not have the energy, sometimes, to talk to friends who call all bouncy (Annabelle likes rainy days; more power to her) and just want to chat, like friends do.

I know what the trouble is, sort of, but there is nothing to be done about it at the moment. I have an awful lot of shit in front of me, and I have to just keep plowing at it. And that isn't even the worst of it.

I remember feeling this way, a long time ago, and I thought I might have grown out of it somehow. Well, I have grown out of some of it, actually. I no longer feel incomplete as a single human, and I sure don't feel any desire to get married or "settle" or go through any other of those proscribed motions.

But unfortunately I seem to have retained the ability to be lonely. Not even garden-variety lonely, but to feel longing. And of a peculiarly annoying sort - it's not attached to anybody in particular, and it's not attached even to a specific vision of a somebody.

I don't know that I'd want a boyfriend if I were offered one. I just know that not being offered one is not doing me any good, either.

I was talking to a friend some time ago, about her mother, and how she'd never quite found anyone who was right for her. It's a variation on the theme that's the black-hole center of virtually every single-girl movie and TV show ever made, but the end of that, always, even in the supposedly singles-positive world of Carrie and the girls (though I'd argue that it's absolutely not singles- positive), is that the girl's "problem" is solved by meeting The Right Guy.

It may well be that it just doesn't work that way in real life, and maybe what I am feeling is step A of coming to terms with that. Maybe that's what my hesitation to even wish for a boyfriend is about. Maybe I am starting to recognize that any romantic relationship is always going to fall short, or that I want a degree of autonomy and freedom that is only achievable when one isn't paired off like one of Noah's monkeys.

Maybe it's because I've realized that my soulmate may well be that bicycle hanging on my wall. He's damn sexy, that's for sure.

Do you ever have trouble figuring out what's going on in your very own head? I am having one of those days. One of those weeks, actually. Maybe one of those fortnights.

While I was tie-dyeing some socks today, one of the color combinations got rather out of hand, and I kept trying to get a handle on it, adding darker and darker greens until, well, I have really no idea what I'm going to end up with. I mean, it's tie-dye; it's always a gamble.

But lately, I swear that's a metaphor for my whole life. Or least the current state of it. I really have no fracking idea what I am doing.

I know that I am not quite happy with a lot of it. I know that I am suddenly overwhelmed with loneliness or longing. But then when I imagine what it might be like to have a boyfriend (which is generally the answer to that particular sort of longing), well, the very idea makes me want to wriggle away and go dancing at some giant mythical party with a hundred gorgeous slave-boys.

(Shut up, I know slavery is wrong; this is a fantasy. And no, my fantasies don't generally run to subgugation; it's just that slave boys are often depicted in nice little purple togas, their skin lightly oiled, and equipped with big bunches of grapes in the one hand and nice fat palm fronds in the other, the better to wave at me with.)

Okay, fantasy over. Where was I? Oh yes, wriggling away from the restrictive clutches of having to say yes to just one boy.

The trouble is, I am not being presented with that problem. I am not being presented with any problem having to do with any specific boy.

I am being presented with a singular lack of boy. A few of them were emailing me, and vanished, as the email boys often do, before you ever get a chance to meet them, even when you've taken the bold step of asking them out and they've said sure, and then when you try to arrange a date, nobody has time that week and so you agree to meet next week, but by next week they've either lost interest or found some magical perfect mate with whom they are off on some Hawaiian island, and there you go, now you are back to the slave-boy fantasy.

In fact, I'd settle for it simply being Celebrate the Bicycle Day again. Every day. Because it's occurred to me not once but several times over the last few days, while I was milling around in my metaphorical mess of color, that I really ought to make it a prerequisite that any theoretical boy with whom I might theoretically become involved at some potential future date should of necessity be a Bike Boy, and preferably, a Bike-Obsessed Boy. And in fact, really it might be best for all concerned if he rode fixed-gear, not because I am a snob about such things (all bikes are good bikes!), but because, well, it's a bit of a spiritual experience, only it's the kind that one likes to be able to rhapsodize about with a like-minded someone.

Oh golly, what a long-assed post this is. See, I told you? Lost in a tie-dye factory, right? I mean, if it were only a fortune-cookie factory, you might be able to send for help via message-in-cookie, or perhaps retrace your steps using that long long strand of cookie-fortune-paper you so cleverly laid out on your way in.

On the other hand, there are good things about messily tie-dyed items. I mean, consider the Icee. I refer, of course, to the rainbow Icee, which amounts to nothing so much as a tie-dyed snowcone. And how can you argue with a dessert that stains your tongue in variegated stripes of blue, lemon, orange, and red. (Rhetorical questions get no question marks, mind you.)

That's all. What, you were hoping for a witty punchline?

Today I slept and slept. Very unusual for me. I got tired at 1am, and got into bed sometime before 2, and read, and turned off the light and fell asleep - all before 3. I know, you're thinking that's so late that it's practically early, but really, for me, it is very early.

And then I woke up at 9, all startled and out of a dream, and went to take care of those things that require doing first thing in the am, and then went back to bed. Tried to find my orange bandana (aka. blindfold), couldn't. Fell asleep anyway (also unusual). Woke up, again startled out of a dream, at 11:45.

So that means I got, like, nine hours of sleep. That's almost twice what I've been typically able to manage the last month. I feel like I'm underwater now, which is interesting given that the last dream I had was about swimming in a saltwater pool, and then jumping into a chlorinated pool with my backpack on. And shoes.

Soanyway, I am in something of an altered state. Sleepy/mellow overlaid on incredibly stressed out. I think I was trying to sleep myself into a different life.

But you know, I actually really like most aspects of my life. Okay, some aspects of it.

I like where I live. I like my little cat (most days) a lot. I love love love my bicycle (you knew that was coming).

I like my apartment a great deal; it's lovely and just the right layout for me, and my views are pleasant and green.

I love my friends, and a bunch of them have moved back to the city in the last couple of years, so we are all kind of a happy converged posse. I love not going into an office every day. I love not getting up early (duh).

Here's what I need to escape: work. It's been bad lately. Oh so very bad.

So bad that I need to change the subject. Right now.

Okay, so tomorrow I have planned the following:

a) tie dyeing with two of the aforementioned friends. One of them lives in a work/live space, which is nice and industrial/grungey - perfect for tie-dyeing.

b) bowling. Ha!

Much better.

Okay, then the other news (and this is rather big, in a tiny way) is: I am knitting socks. Well, sock. Yes, and if that weren't big enough, I am doing it via Magic Loop! Yawn, I know, you experienced sock knitters, you. But you see, I have tried this before. I tried and failed to do Magic Loop on some Lornas Laces about a year ago, and I just couldn't get the method to stick in my head. I did about an inch of ribbing, and then put it down and promptly forgot what the hell I was doing, and couldn't figure it out again.

Then a few weeks ago I went and learned the 2 circs method, and somehow that made Magic Loop make sense to me. Go figure. Of course, some of us will not be surprised by the reason I chose to do ML instead of just continuing w/ 2 circs: it's cheaper to buy one needle than two. Plus, in my case, I can't seem to remember that yarn stores exist after about April 25th, and I already had one long size 1.

Blah blah blah. Knitrivia. What can I say? It's been a long week.

PS. Almost forgot crucial info: The yarn is Colinette Jitterbug, in Castagna (128), the exact blend of purples and browns that I've been favoring lately.

Riding home at night is like a haiku. All you hear is wind whispering in the spokes, soft stroke of pedal, and the fact that the chain needs a little lube. The bike sings to me, but it's a song composed largely of motion and breath, rather than actual sound.

Except, of course, for the quick sshhhhh! of brake pads when cars or pedestrians veer out in front of me without warning, as they often do.

I'm wearing Shrodinger's Cat on my arms, which so far smells primarily of melons. Though it's hard to tell, since the apartment also smells of chain lube.

I'd intended to help out with a friend's podcast earlier, but the cigarette smoke in that joint was way too much for my virgin (and I'd like to keep them that way, thank you) lungs.

It meant that I spent some time sitting in the window of a cafe on a chic street in Williamsburg, watching the hipsters march by in insouciant procession.

For a moment I thought I caught sight of the Brown Bike Man, walking unsteadily on bike shoes, but I don't think it could have been him. His shoes were ordinary sneakers, if I recall.

Okay, okay. I got nothin'. So I will try to regale you with selected excerpts.

I still hate my work. But I need the money. What else is new.

My friend Special J has designed an extensive questionnaire that I am to hand out to first dates at the 90-minute mark (assuming they last that long). She apparently roped some geek-date of hers into formatting the thing with proper checkboxes and all. She has magic powers.

I am busily knitting lots of little projects on 2 circs, but I have yet to get some tiny needles for sockmaking. I just keep forgetting to hit a knitting store. That happens to me in spring. I forget they exist. I'll wait while y'all make a grab for the oxygen.

Better? Okay. Too bad one can't install smelling salts as an option in Movable Type.

Current project is a shoulder-strap pad for my bike bag. Yes, yes, it's still all about the bike, and always will be, if I have anything to say about it.

I was trying to explain to a potential date about the bike-love, but I don't think he got it. I mean, he's a fellow cyclist and all, but when I mentioned that I sometimes kiss the top tube after a ride, I could just hear him getting weirded out. Through email.

The only person who's yet gotten it is this guy, whom I met at an event appropriately titled Bicycle Fetish Day. He really got it. I asked him to tell me about his bike, and he started out by saying, somewhat abashedly, that he's become obsessed with it. He can't stop thinking about it. He can't focus on work. He doesn't want to do anything other than ride it, all day every day.

I smiled and nodded, and told him about my bike, and how he has a name, and how every time I am going down the big hill on the bridge, I yell the bike's name as a rallying cry.

The bike-obsessed man appeared to melt and laugh and relax all at once, and we had a nice few moments, and I took his picture* and then I went over and talked to some other bike fiends. I mean, bike friends. Yeah, that's what I mean. Uh-huh.

*I hope Brown Bike Man doesn't mind me posting his picture. I forgot to ask his permission. His bike is brand-new (in a sense; it's a custom build-up from an older frame, I believe), and really nice. Graceful lines, and a lovely shade of brown.

PS. I see in this picture now that Brown Bike Man was rather handsome, and that perhaps I should have asked him out.

Is it just me or is there something inherently funny about a cat sniffing a Guinness can?

That's about all that's funny 'round these parts at the mo, but I thought I'd spread the wealth, such as it is.

Still:

1) Working when I want to be playing.

2) Wrastling with recalcitrant clients.

3) Looking futilely for a suitably boyish distraction.

4) Wanting to ride my bicyclette and feeling concerned about his seatpost.

5) Planning to attempt a test-voyage tomorrow (would have done today, but too too rainy).

6) Wondering if I will ever get some time off.

7) Knitting in between the cracks, such as they are.

8) Staying up far past the point when the birdies begin to sing, and sing, and sing their fool little feathery heads off.

9) Watching science fiction on TV and DVD.

10) Honing my nascent superpowers while drudging along in my Clark Kent suit.

11) (why stop at 10?) Being the center of one small stripey cat's admittedly limited universe.

12) Unable to find biking pants that fit me right.

13) (lucky!) Waiting to find out what Schrodinger's Cat smells like.

Often when spring hits I lose all desire to knit. But this time - perhaps because the weather continues to be intermittently cool, especially after the sun drops down - I am experiencing a late-season surge in knitting.

In a small way, of course. I haven't been working on my sweaters-in-progress or anything, but the legwarmers are done, and I am already working on another small project.

I am digging the two-circs method, and as soon as I get around to buying some size 1s or 0s I can start those momentous First Sox. (Already have plenty of sock yarn, natch.)

I had a big, long, rather fraught day, the details of which I will not go into, except to say that I tried and failed to fix part of my bike using a bolt and a can of Guinness. Just the can; the Guinness I drank last night in preparation.

I'd planned a triumphant and hilarious play-by-play of my amazing McGyverlike powers, but alas, 'twas not to be. That's okay. It would have pegged the sillyometer right off scale (not that that is a bad thing).

So now I am enduring the horrible ads for those egregious videos of college girls disrobing in assorted drunken stupors, which is pretty much what the Spike channel advertises at this hour, again and again. Geez. What a girl has to do to watch a little Star Trek.

In other news, I was totally suckered into ordering some "Imps" from here, and I am excitedly awaiting their arrival. It will be a while; apparently they have a backlog. Probably Juno's fault; she writes so eloquently about perfume that I can't imagine anyone not being drawn under her spell.

Then again, the names of their scents are enough to lure anyone with half an imagination. Carnal. Cheshire Cat. Forbidden Fruit. Libertine. Dragon's Blood. Venice. Lightning. Delirium. Ophelia. I mean, c'mon!

Short form:

1. Tangled successfully with Client A.
2. Lack of sleep and plentiful stress due to need to tangle with Client A made me sick.
3. Had to cancel all lovely social plans for weekend.
4. Got better just in time to stay up all night reading and then wake up to more client difficulties Monday morning.
5. Tangled successfully with Client B.
6. Am in the final ribbing on legwarmer #2 of set of legwarmers #2.
7. Went on (last week, or the week before: who can remember?) one bad and one decent date. The decent still hasn't quite erased the bad. I think I need another good one.
8. Have scheduled a date with a different boy for later this week.
9. Dad coming to visit.
10. Bicycle Fetish Day requiring my attendance.
11. Saw Ironman. Note to world at large: If Robert Downey Jr. should suddenly mysteriously disappear, it is because I have him tied up in my room. I will release him in a few weeks. Maybe. It might take longer than that to fully have my way with him. (Stamina, you know.)
12. Apparently everyone has decided I need spa treatments and is taking me there; who am I to argue?
13. Paid quarterly taxes (only a couple of weeks late).
14. Ordered bike clothes. Ordered perfumes. Ordered bike shoes. Ordered a change of career and a fabulous young boy. None of these have arrived yet. I am hoping I can afford the latter two.
15. I swear, I swear, as soon as these legwarmers are done, it's Sock Time.
16. Sometimes I feel just like this beer can.